How to Remove Location and EXIF Data From Photos Before You Share Them
Imagine listing an old bicycle on a classifieds site with photos taken in your building's parking area, and a buyer turning up at your flat door instead of the gate, because the GPS coordinates were in the photo files. It's an easy mistake to make, because phone photos often carry a hidden block of metadata called EXIF, and depending on your settings it can include where the picture was taken, which phone took it, and the exact time.
Strip image EXIF shows you what each photo is carrying and makes a clean copy to share instead.
What you'll see
Drop, paste or choose photos (as many as 200 in one go). For each file the page lists what it found (location, camera, lens, capture time) and produces a cleaned version straight away. Files that contain a position are flagged in yellow, so you can spot them at a glance. If you want to see the spot on a map, there's an OpenStreetMap link that only opens when you click it.
Steps
- Open the tool and drop photos in, paste with Ctrl+V / ⌘V, or press choose images.
- Check the Before column. Yellow means there's a location in that file.
- Leave the rotation option ticked (more on that below).
- Download each cleaned file, or Download all as ZIP.
- Share the cleaned copies. Keep the originals private.
Why quality doesn't suffer
Many "remove metadata" tools simply redraw the image and save it again, which recompresses it and costs quality. This one works on the file structure instead:
- JPG: the metadata segments (EXIF with its GPS data, XMP, IPTC and comments) are left out, and the compressed image data is carried over untouched. The file ends up smaller by exactly the metadata's size, and the colour profile stays so colours look the same.
- PNG: the chunks holding text, EXIF and timestamps are removed.
- WebP: cleaned without re-encoding; EXIF and XMP are removed.
- Other formats the browser can open, like GIF or AVIF, have to be re-encoded, and the table says so.
The rotation option
Phones frequently store a picture sideways along with a small instruction telling viewers to turn it. By default the clean copy keeps that one instruction and nothing else, so your photo still appears the right way up. You can untick it, but then some apps will display the picture on its side.
When to use it
- Selling things online. Marketplace and classifieds photos are often taken at home.
- Sending photos as files. Email attachments, cloud links and "send as document" in chat apps usually keep the original metadata.
- Photos of children, their school, or anywhere routine you'd rather not pinpoint.
- Work photos, when you don't want your device details attached.
Doesn't WhatsApp already remove it?
Many messaging and social apps recompress images and drop location, but not every app does, and behaviour changes when you send a photo as a document rather than as an image. Cleaning the file yourself means you don't have to know each app's rules.
Problems you might hit
iPhone HEIC photos won't load. Only browsers that can decode HEIC (Safari) can process them. Open the page in Safari, or export the photo as JPG first.
The file is still large. Removing metadata only saves a few kilobytes. To shrink the picture itself, run the clean copy through Image compressor.
Stop it at the source. In your phone's camera or privacy settings, you can switch off location tagging for new photos. The tool remains useful for everything already in your gallery.
Privacy
According to the page, photos are read and cleaned in the browser tab and aren't uploaded. When I looked at the script, it reads the file, rebuilds it without the metadata blocks and hands you a download, with no code for sending files anywhere. Separately, the page carries Google ads, which can use cookies.
FAQ
Will my photo look worse? No for JPG, PNG and WebP, since the image data isn't touched. GIF and AVIF are re-encoded.
How do I get rid of the location? Add the photo and download the cleaned copy; the GPS data lives in the metadata that's left out.
Can I do a whole album? Yes, up to 200 photos, downloaded together as a ZIP.
Does it cost anything? No, it's free and needs no account.
Before your next listing or upload, check what your photos give away: Strip image EXIF.
— Alok Kumar Singh